4/28/05, evening
He's off. I may not see Walter again for a couple of months or more.
OTOH, I'm heading through some of my favorite Florida countryside. Beautiful scenery, oranges, shark's teeth. What more can one ask for?
I head through Trenton, taking pictures. This is a county seat, and so, spent for some extra frills on brickwork back in the day. Beautiful buildings. You don't see many older buildings in Florida. Huge old oaks draped in Spanish moss. Big beautiful magnolias, showing their huge white flowers. I want to come back here and take more pictures, another day, when I can really devote my full attention to it.
Now it's time to go home.
4 comments:
Old brickwork and trains...mmm. I used to subscribe to "Model Railroader" magazine, and had a small N gauge layout a decade ago. That old switcher makes my hands itch.
It's a switcher? That little caboosey-looking thing? Tell tell, I'm curious!
Yes. They were used exclusively in the switchyards to shuffle the cars around to assemble the trains in the correct order for the destination(s) of the cars. That particular one is about as small as they were ever made.
I don't know why I have such a fascination with them. I lived in Winona, MN for a couple of years. There was a Burlington Northern Line that ran through town, but Winona also served as the terminus for a "short line" railroad that ran through southern MN. Down by the river there was a switchyard where the short line assembled train segments for the BN trains to pick up and carry on to their destination. I used to love watching them. Winona also served as a three-way terminal for grain trucks, grain trains and grain barges on the Mississippi.
If I ever do set up a layout again, it will be in HO gauge and will most definitely include a switcher in a yard somewhere on the layout.
I am absolutely floored that you knew what that was, and so much about it to boot. I was fond of it before, but now it's even cuter. Especially this one, being just a little kitten. I wish I could beam it up to you for safekeeping and proper appreciation of its qualities.
I can see why you'd like those switcher things so. They are: busy, pivotal, special, industrious, and never go anywhere even though they're train cars. They fill a unique niche, and it's an important one.
I was never really grabbed by the lure of trains as a hobby. But I've noticed over the years that where ever I've moved, it's always within hearing of a train. The sound of a train whistle in the distance in the middle of the night is a very soothing one to me.
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